


According to her cloth

by vass



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Blood Magic, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: "We all have something we used to be, haven't we, dear? Done things we would rather die than have known?"





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



"We have something in common, Lieutenant, do we not?"  
"We're both Vints, if that's what you mean."  
"Something beyond our shared heritage, dear."  
Krem scratches his head. "Can't think of anything, Altus."

"I refer to the opportunities denied us by an accident of birth. You served in the military, my dear. And had not discovery led to your dismissal, you might have wished for greater advancement. Centurion, perhaps. Tribune, even? We will never know, unless a more enlightened day dawns in our homeland. But there are those even now who strive to bring that day about. At your age I supposed the gossamer strands of custom that prevent a woman from serving as the Black Divine to be as fixed as the law barring one such as you from the military service you wanted. But we live in a changing world, and new vistas are opening before us."

Krem eyes her Tevinter-style cowl skeptically, rather than meet her gaze. It's ice blue snoufleur, imported, lined in white silk and trimmed with a small rope of pearls. It sets off her face perfectly. He can reckon the cost pretty well, and has seen people bought and sold for less. His own father, for example... "Is that so? Way I heard it, you ran from Minrathous ahead of a big scandal after someone attacked your lover with blood magic. You were searching for a cure for him when you found out what the Venatori were doing. Now you figure you can make political capital of opposing them if they fail badly enough, and you're here to make sure that happens. What I'm not clear on is why you didn't throw in with them. They want to make Tevinter 'what it once was' by restoring its 'hallowed traditions'. Seems like something you'd approve of."

"Hardly, dear. Some traditions are timeless classics, but some are merely the dead fashions of a bygone year, fit only for a provincial backwater or a faded empire." She sniffs delicately. "Or a bygone age. I will not have our homeland become irrelevant. But perhaps we can talk reform later. Your captain is approaching."

She watches him leave. The Iron Bull claps him on the shoulder as they pass. He has heard their discussion, of course. Viviana is not unaware of Qunari hearing.

"The Imperial Chantry, huh?" The Bull raises his eyebrows at her, the left one cloven in half by deep scarring, surmounting a burnished steel eyepatch. "Why not the Magisterium?"  
Viviana smiles pityingly. "The difference between power and influence, my dear. I wouldn't expect a Qunari to understand."  
"Big dumb oxmen that we are," he says, as if agreeing with her.

"I merely meant that your society is arranged on very different lines. I am given to understand role is everything, under the Qun."  
"That's right. But I wouldn't say we lack either power or influence."  
"Not at all, my dear. But you, as a Ben Hassrath, for example, are not subject to the Arigena, though she outranks you."

The Bull shakes his head slowly. "It's not like that. The Qun's like a body. Fingers and stomach need each other, but neither commands the other directly."  
"Just so. If your merchant class wished to change something about how the Ben Hassrath do things, only the Ariqun could make that change, and of all the merchants and craftspeople, only the Arigena would have her ear."

Bull shakes his head again. "You're wrong there, Viv. We don't change. Aban aqun. The sea is unchanging. The Ariqun can't make us other than we are any more than the Arigena could."  
"But the tide does rise and fall, the Iron Bull. You must still alter with the times, though your essence remains what it is." She lets her tone chill. "And you will address me as Enchanter Viviana of Minrathous Circle, or as Lady Ferrus. Not as 'Viv'."  
"Oh. Right, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am."  
She considers the effect she has produced. It is sufficient. "Ma'am will also do."

"If you don't mind me saying so, ma'am, you seem to know a lot about the Qun."  
"Well, darling, I am sure I need not tell you that knowledge is power."  
"But what I want to know is, what you want to do with that influence. What's your ultimate goal, then, for when you're the Black Divine?"  
"What else, my dear? Reunification with the Southern Chantry, and thereby reform for both. I mean to set things in order. No more tacitly sanctioned blood magic in the north or Templar abuses in the south. Perfect harmony."  
"You don't aim low, do you, Lady Viviana?"  
"What on earth would be the point, dear?"

* * *

Viviana is satisfied with her first serious interaction with the Inquisitor's pet Qunari spy. She has given him a convincing account of why she is here, and for what purpose. The best possible account, as it is all true and much of it verifiable. She doesn't owe him, or his employers (whether the Ariqun or the Inquisitor) her additional reasons for joining the Inquisition.

The first priority of any rational person, after all, should be to do whatever is in their power to close the rifts. Truthfully, that would be sufficient for Viviana in any event (while turning the endeavor to her own advantage, naturally,) but it would hardly be enough motivation to appease Lady Trevelyan's suspicious friends. That closing the rifts requires the downfall of the Venatori is only logical. The distant future political advantage of this to her personally and its place in her eventual plans are quite real, if tenuous.

Young Lieutenant Aclassi had been right about the scandal, too. If Viviana hadn't loved her lover so much, she might have confined it to the routine assassination of a minor altus by his house's rivals, regrettably successful. It was what the Ghisals would have wanted, had she consulted them. But instead she'd gambled her reputation and theirs by trying to rescue Sebastianus from his own folly.

A gamble which she'd lost only because her bidding partner had folded prematurely. Thrown himself between her and the demon she was fighting for his body. "Vita, I never wanted you to see me like this," he had said at the last. In which case he should never have consented to be possessed, but we all choose the consequences of our choices along with the choices we make. Viviana herself as much as anyone.

One of those consequences being the need to tie up the loose ends. All of Minrathous now knows that Sebastianus Ghisal had been attacked by an assassin so lacking in the requisite flair as to have succumbed to the sloth demon he was summoning. That two of his servants were killed too, poor things. That Lord Sebastianus had destroyed the demon and been gravely injured, and his lover had kept him alive a full week before her attempts at a cure had failed. In the event that anyone asks what she tried, Viviana has a touching story about the heart of a snowy wyvern, but she's holding that story in reserve until they do. It wouldn't do to look too eager to explain herself.

All of Minrathous and Thedas at large do not need to know what manner of research she had resorted to at last. Least of all House Ghisal, who are outwardly grateful for her loyalty but would have preferred her to have dispatched him as soon as she'd known of his possession, and not dragged things out looking for an impossible cure. Her standing with them is somewhat damaged as a result, though not, she trusts, irreparably so.

It is a pity she had not known sooner about Gereon Alexius' researches into time magic. She'd have tried to preserve the locket if she'd known. Have intervened before he used it to get to Redcliffe before her. There are a great many things Viviana would change, given the opportunity to travel back in time.

But things worked out anyway. If her path and Alexius' had not crossed, she would not have learned of the Venatori and their plans, and could not have warned the Inquisition. The fate of Thedas is, after all, at stake. And since the fate of Thedas is at stake, the Venatori must fall. Including, not incidentally, that one Venatori who, in a certain library where he was researching his own desperate remedy for a doomed loved one, had chanced across Enchanter Ferrus, investigating a blood magic ritual against possession.

She cannot save Felix Alexius any more than she could save her own Sebastianus, but following up a hint from the Inquistor's strange spirit Cole, she took the trouble to speak to young Alexius and learned that, returning home after his mathematical studies at the University of Orlais, he had reluctantly broken off an attachment to a promising young Enchanter at Montsimmard Circle whom the Inquisition would do well to recruit. If enabling Felix Alexius to spend his last days reuniting with Dorien du Paon will also secure Monsieur Dorien's loyalty, then it will be a kindness to them both as well as a benefit to the cause. And, perhaps, some gesture of consolation for Felix after the sad loss of his father.

All of Viviana's plans lie along a single path now, with no more dilemmas or hesitations or dead ends. Support the Inquisition. Stop the Venatori. Save Thedas. Restore order. Promote the Inquisition's aims, and make it into a force to be reckoned with, with a reputation even Minrathous will respect. Lay the groundwork, at the same time, for greater cooperation between southern and northern Chantries. Continue to build goodwill and foster helpful connections at the highest levels. Perhaps foster a more intimate connection with Evelyn Trevelyan. Conceal the depths to which she stooped while trying to save Sebastianus, that single failed blood magic rite, and honor his memory with her work. Make his death and her sacrifice meaningful. She would have done anything to save Sebastianus — did, in fact — but though he is gone, she is alive. She is still Enchanter Viviana Ferrus, Altus, and there is much to do.

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is from Vivienne's party banter with Sera in canon. Title is from a line of John Dryden's 'The Cock and the Fox', "According to her cloth she cut her coat," and has no special relevance beyond a character making the best of her situation.
> 
> spookykingdomstarlight's prompts for Vivienne were: "Vivienne would do anything and everything to save her love" and "Vivienne works some political magic, whether on behalf of the Inquisition or for circle mages." One of their other Dragon Age prompts was "Dorian never intended to become a blood mage, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to protect the people you care about." They also mentioned liking role reversal aus, and canon divergent aus, and sympathetic portrayals of flawed characters, and listed character bashing as a DNW. I really hope this comes across as a sympathetically flawed Vivienne (a character I love) and not character bashing.
> 
> Du Fer is French for iron, which is Ferrus in Latin. Pavus is Latin for peacock, which is Du Paon in French. Sebastianus is the Latin equivalent of Bastien, and I kind of fudged Ghislain into Ghisal because it sounded like something a Tevinter house could have been called, and Ghislain doesn't.
> 
> I decided to focus on Vivienne, not Dorian, for this roleswap, but if anyone's interested, Dorien was born in Wycome, in the Free Marches, the son of wealthy merchants, and left (ran away, actually) for Ostwick Circle at an early age. His father kept in contact with him, and repeatedly tried to make him use his power for the family's benefit. When he transferred to Montsimmard Circle to do advanced research in their library, his father tried to insist that he join the Game. He refused, and their estrangement dates from this point. Later on, Halward approaches Mother Giselle, and subsequently the Inquisitor learns that when Dorien first manifested magic, his father tried to convince him to become an apostate, conceal his magic, and work for the family's benefit without getting proper training or anything. Dorien's horror of this has a lot to do with why he's (at least up to now) a Chantry loyalist in this universe. He has a lot of shame about uncontrolled magic (accidentally setting the curtains on fire would nearly kill him) and absolutely none about being gay. Felix nearly asked if he could stay with Dorien after he graduated from the University of Orlais, instead of going back to Tevinter where he'd have to get married and be respectable, and then taking that holiday with his parents where he got infected with Darkspawn taint. Dorien would have said yes.


End file.
